Compared with the average number of automotive fatalities for the same months from 1996 through 2000, an additional 353 people died in car crashes in October, November, and December of 2001, says psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. According to Gigerenzer, people tend to avoid situations for which they feel “dread risk,” a fear of many deaths occurring at once. Gigerenzer may have tapped into an extreme example of people’s tendency to rely on emotional reactions to situations when estimating risk, remarks psychologist Paul Slovic of Decision Research, a nonprofit research corporation in Eugene, Ore.